The Congo and Other Poems

Vachel Lindsay

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• Publié par: nivir
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 60
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Congo and Other Poems, by Vachel Lindsay This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Congo and Other Poems Author: Vachel Lindsay Release Date: July 23, 2008 [EBook #1021] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONGO AND OTHER POEMS ***

Produced by Alan R. Light, and David Widger

THE CONGO AND OTHER POEMS

By Vachel Lindsay [Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Illinois Artist. 1879-1931.]

With an introduction by Harriet Monroe Editor of "Poetry"

[Notes: The 'stage-directions' given in "The Congo" and those poems which are meant to be read aloud, are traditionally printed to the right side of the first line it refers to. This is possible, but impracticable, to imitate in a simple ASCII text. Therefore these 'stage- directions' are given on the line BEFORE the first line they refer to, and are furthermore indented 20 spaces and given bold print to keep it clear to the reader which parts are text and which parts directions.] [This electronic text was transcribed from a reprint of the original edition, which was first published in New York, in September, 1914. Due to a great deal of irregularity between titles in the table of contents and in the text of the original, there are some slight differences from the original in these matters—with the more complete titles replacing cropped ones. In one case they are different enough that both are given, and "Twenty Poems in which...." was originally "Twenty Moon Poems" in the table of contents—the odd thing about both these titles is that there are actually twenty-TWO moon poems.]

THE CONGO AND OTHER POEMS

Introduction. By Harriet Monroe When 'Poetry, A Magazine of Verse', was first published in Chicago in the autumn of 1912, an Illinois poet, Vachel Lindsay, was, quite appropriately, one of its first discoveries. It may be not quite without significance that the issue of January, 1913, which led off with 'General William Booth Enters into Heaven', immediately followed the number in which the great poet of Bengal, Rabindra Nath Tagore, was first presented to the American public, and that these two antipodal poets soon appeared in person among the earliest visitors to the editor. For the coming together of East and West may prove to be the great event of the approaching era, and if the poetry of the now famous Bengali laureate garners the richest wisdom and highest spirituality of his ancient race, so one may venture to believe that the young Illinois troubadour brings from Lincoln's city an authentic strain of the lyric message of this newer world. It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to mention Mr. Lindsay's loyalty to the people of his place and hour, or the training in sympathy with their aims and ideals which he has achieved through vagabondish wanderings in the Middle West. And we may permit time to decide how far he expresses their emotion. But it may be opportune to emphasize his plea for poetry as a song art, an art appealing to the ear rather than the eye. The first section of this volume is especially an effort to restore poetry to its proper place—the audience-chamber, and take it out of the library, the closet. In the library it has become, so far as the people are concerned, almost a lost art, and perhaps it can be restored to the people only through a renewal of its appeal to the ear. I am tempted to quote from Mr. Lindsay's explanatory note which accompanied three of these poems when they were first printed in 'Poetry'. He said: "Mr. Yeats asked me recently in Chicago, 'What are we going to do to restore the primitive singing of poetry?' I find what Mr. Yeats means by 'the primitive singing of poetry' in Professor Edward Bliss Reed's new volume on 'The English Lyric' He says in his chapter on the . definition of the lyric: 'With the Greeks "song" was an all-embracing term. It included the crooning of the nurse to the child... the half-sung chant of the mower or sailor... the formal ode sung by the poet. In all Greek lyrics, even in the choral odes, music was the handmaid of verse.... The poet himself composed the accompaniment. Euripides was censured because Iophon had assisted him in the musical setting of some of his dramas.' Here is pictured a type of Greek work which survives in American vaudeville, where every line may be two-thirds spoken and one-third sung, the entire rendering, musical and elocutionary, depending upon the improvising power and sure instinct of the performer. "I respectfully submit these poems as experiments in which I endeavor to carry this vaudeville form back towards the old Greek precedent of the half-chanted lyric. In this case the one-third of music must be added by the instinct of the reader. He must be Iophon. And he can easily be Iophon if he brings to bear upon the piece what might be called the Higher Vaudeville imagination.... "Big general contrasts between the main sections should be the rule of the first attempts at improvising. It is the hope of the writer that after two or three readings each line will suggest its own separate touch of melody to the reader who has become accustomed to the cadences. Let him read what he likes read, and sing what he likes sung." It was during this same visit in Chicago, at 'Poetry's' banquet on the evening of March first, 1914, that Mr. Yeats honored Mr. Lindsay by addressing his after-dinner talk primarily to him as "a fellow craftsman", and by saying of 'General Booth': "This poem is stripped bare of ornament; it has an earnest simplicity, a strange beauty, and you know Bacon said, 'There is no excellent beauty without strangeness.'" This recognition from the distinguished Irish poet tempts me to hint at the cosmopolitan aspects of such racily local art as Mr. Lindsay's. The subject is too large for a merely introductory word, but the reader may be invited to reflect upon it. If Mr. Lindsay's poetry should cross the ocean, it would not be the first time that our most indigenous art has reacted upon the art of older nations. Besides Poe—who, though indigenous in ways too subtle for brief analysis, yet passed all frontiers in his swift, sad flight—the two American artists of widest influence, Whitman and Whistler, have been intensely American in temperament and in the special spiritual quality of their art. If Whistler was the first great artist to accept the modern message in Oriental art, if Whitman was the first great modern poet to discard the limitations of conventional form: if both were

more free, more individual, than their contemporaries, this was the expression of their Americanism, which may perhaps be defined as a spiritual independence and love of adventure inherited from the pioneers. Foreign artists are usually the first to recognize this new tang; one detects the influence of the great dead poet and dead painter in all modern art which looks forward instead of back; and their countrymen, our own contemporary poets and painters, often express indirectly, through French influences, a reaction which they are reluctant to confess directly. A lighter phase of this foreign enthusiasm for the American tang is confessed by Signor Marinetti, the Italian "futurist", when in his article on 'Futurism and the Theatre', in 'The Mask', he urges the revolutionary value of "American eccentrics", citing the fundamental primitive quality in their vaudeville art. This may be another statement of Mr. Lindsay's plea for a closer relation between the poet and his audience, for a return to the healthier open-air conditions, and immediate personal contacts, in the art of the Greeks and of primitive nations. Such conditions and contacts may still be found, if the world only knew it, in the wonderful song- dances of the Hopis and others of our aboriginal tribes. They may be found, also, in a measure, in the quick response between artist and audience in modern vaudeville. They are destined to a wider and higher influence; in fact, the development of that influence, the return to primitive sympathies between artist and audience, which may make possible once more the assertion of primitive creative power, is recognized as the immediate movement in modern art. It is a movement strong enough to persist in spite of extravagances and absurdities; strong enough, it may be hoped, to fulfil its purpose and revitalize the world. It is because Mr. Lindsay's poetry seems to be definitely in that movement that it is, I think, important. Harriet Monroe.

Contents

THE CONGO AND OTHER POEMS Introduction. By Harriet Monroe

First Section ~~ Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted. The Congo The Santa Fe Trail The Firemen's Ball The Master of the Dance The Mysterious Cat A Dirge for a Righteous Kitten Yankee Doodle The Black Hawk War of the Artists The Jingo and the Minstrel I Heard Immanuel Singing

Second Section ~~ Incense An Argument A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign In Memory of a Child Galahad, Knight Who Perished The Leaden-eyed An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie The Hearth Eternal The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit By the Spring, at Sunset I Went down into the Desert Love and Law

The Perfect Marriage Darling Daughter of Babylon The Amaranth The Alchemist's Petition Two Easter Stanzas The Traveller-heart The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son

Third Section ~~ A Miscellany called "the Christmas Tree" This Section is a Christmas Tree The Sun Says his Prayers Popcorn, Glass Balls, and Cranberries (As it were) How a Little Girl Danced In Praise of Songs that Die Factory Windows are always Broken To Mary Pickford Blanche Sweet Sunshine An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic When Gassy Thompson Struck it Rich Rhymes for Gloriana

Fourth Section ~~ Twenty Poems in which the Moon is the Principal    Figure of Speech Once More—To Gloriana First Section: Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children Second Section: The Moon is a Mirror

Fifth Section I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight II. A Curse for Kings III. Who Knows? IV. To Buddha V. The Unpardonable Sin VI. Above the Battle's Front VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your Psyche Wings

Biographical Note

First Section ~~ Poems intended to be read aloud, or chanted.

The Congo A Study of the Negro Race  I. Their Basic Savagery

 Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,  Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,                         A deep rolling bass.  Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,  Pounded on the table,  Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,  Hard as they were able,  Boom, boom, BOOM,  With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,  Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.  THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.  I could not turn from their revel in derision.                         More deliberate. chanted. Solemnly  THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,  CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.  Then along that riverbank  A thousand miles  Tattooed cannibals danced in files;  Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song                         A rapidly piling climax of speed and racket.  And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.  And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,  "BLOOD" screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors,  "Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,  Harry the uplands,  Steal all the cattle,  Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,  Bing.  Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,"                         With a philosophic pause.  A roaring, epic, rag-time tune  From the mouth of the Congo  To the Mountains of the Moon.  Death is an Elephant,                         Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre.  Torch-eyed and horrible,  Foam-flanked and terrible.  BOOM, steal the pygmies,  BOOM, kill the Arabs,  BOOM, kill the white men,  HOO, HOO, HOO.                         Like the wind in the chimney.  Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost  Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.  Hear how the demons chuckle and yell  Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.  Listen to the creepy proclamation,  Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation,  Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay,  Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play:—  Be careful what you do, "                          HeavyAll the o sounds very golden. accents very heavy.  Light accents very light. Last line whispered.  Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,  And all of the other  Gods of the Congo,  Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,  Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,  Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."  II. Their Irrepressible High Spirits                         Rather shrill and high.  Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call  Danced the juba in their gambling-hall  And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town,  And guyed the policemen and laughed them down  With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.                         Read exactly as in first section.  THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,  CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.                         Lay emphasis on the delicate ideas.  Keep as light-footed as possible.  A negro fairyland swung into view,  A minstrel river  Where dreams come true.  The ebony palace soared on high  Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky.  The inlaid porches and casements shone

 With gold and ivory and elephant-bone.  And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore  At the baboon butler in the agate door,  And the well-known tunes of the parrot band  That trilled on the bushes of that magic land.                         With pomposity.  A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came  Through the agate doorway in suits of flame,  Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust  And hats that were covered with diamond-dust.  And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call  And danced the juba from wall to wall.                         With a great deliberation and ghostliness.  But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng  With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song:—  "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you."...                         With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp.  Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes,  Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats,  Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine,  And tall silk hats that were red as wine.                         With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm.  And they pranced with their butterfly partners there,  Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair,  Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet,  And bells on their ankles and little black feet.  And the couples railed at the chant and the frown  Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down.  (O rare was the revel, and well worth while  That made those glowering witch-men smile.) The cake-walk royalty then began     To walk for a cake that was tall as a man  To the tune of "Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,"                         With a touch of negro dialect,  and as rapidly as possible toward the end.  While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air,  And sang with the scalawags prancing there:—  "Walk with care, walk with care,  Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,  And all of the other  Gods of the Congo,  Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.  Beware, beware, walk with care,  Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.  Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom,  Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom,  Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay,  BOOM."                         Slow philosophic calm.  Oh rare was the revel, and well worth while  That made those glowering witch-men smile.  III. The Hope of their Religion                          a literal imitation WithHeavy bass.  of camp-meeting racket, and trance.  A good old negro in the slums of the town  Preached at a sister for her velvet gown.  Howled at a brother for his low-down ways,  His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days.  Beat on the Bible till he wore it out  Starting the jubilee revival shout.  And some had visions, as they stood on chairs,  And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs,  And they all repented, a thousand strong  From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong  And slammed with their hymn books till they shook the room  With "glory, glory, glory,"  And "Boom, boom, BOOM."                         Exactly as in the first section.  Begin with terror and power, end with joy.  THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK  CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.  And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil  And showed the apostles with their coats of mail.  In bright white steele they were seated round  And their fire-eyes watched where the Congo wound.  And the twelve Apostles, from their thrones on high

 Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly cry:—                         Sung to the tune of "Hark, ten thousand  harps and voices". "Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle;      Never again will he hoo-doo you,  Never again will he hoo-doo you."                         With growing deliberation and joy.  Then along that river, a thousand miles  The vine-snared trees fell down in files.  Pioneer angels cleared the way  For a Congo paradise, for babes at play,  For sacred capitals, for temples clean.  Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean.                         rather high key—as delicately as possible.In a  There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed  A million boats of the angels sailed  With oars of silver, and prows of blue  And silken pennants that the sun shone through.  'Twas a land transfigured, 'twas a new creation.  Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation  And on through the backwoods clearing flew:—                         tune of "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices".To the  "Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle.  Never again will he hoo-doo you.  Never again will he hoo-doo you."  Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men,  And only the vulture dared again  By the far, lone mountains of the moon  To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune:—                         Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper.  "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,  Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.  Mumbo... Jumbo... will... hoo-doo... you " . This poem, particularly the third section, was suggested by an allusion in a sermon by my pastor, F. W. Burnham, to the heroic life and death of Ray Eldred. Eldred was a missionary of the Disciples of Christ who perished while swimming a treacherous branch of the Congo. See "A Master Builder on the Congo", by Andrew F. Hensey, published by Fleming H. Revell.

The Santa Fe Trail

 (A Humoresque) I asked the old Negro, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark, or thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane."  I. In which a Racing Auto comes from the East                         To be sung delicately, to an improvised tune.  This is the order of the music of the morning:—  First, from the far East comes but a crooning.  The crooning turns to a sunrise singing.  Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn.  Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn....                         To be sung or read with great speed.  Hark to the pace-horn, chase-horn, race-horn.  And the holy veil of the dawn has gone.  Swiftly the brazen car comes on.  It burns in the East as the sunrise burns.  I see great flashes where the far trail turns.  Its eyes are lamps like the eyes of dragons.  It drinks gasoline from big red flagons.  Butting through the delicate mists of the morning,  It comes like lightning, goes past roaring.  It will hail all the wind-mills, taunting, ringing,  Dodge the cyclones,  Count the milestones,  On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills—  Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hills....                         To be read or sung in a rolling bass,  with some deliberation.

 Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn,  Ho for the gay-horn, bark-horn, bay-horn.  Ho for Kansas, land that restores us  When houses choke us, and great books bore us!  Sunrise Kansas, harvester's Kansas,  A million men have found you before us.  II. In which Many Autos pass Westward                         In an even, deliberate, narrative manner.  I want live things in their pride to remain.  I will not kill one grasshopper vain  Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door.  I let him out, give him one chance more.  Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim,  Grasshopper lyrics occur to him.  I am a tramp by the long trail's border,  Given to squalor, rags and disorder.  I nap and amble and yawn and look,  Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book,  Recite to the children, explore at my ease,  Work when I work, beg when I please,  Give crank-drawings, that make folks stare  To the half-grown boys in the sunset glare,  And get me a place to sleep in the hay  At the end of a live-and-let-live day.  I find in the stubble of the new-cut weeds  A whisper and a feasting, all one needs:  The whisper of the strawberries, white and red  Here where the new-cut weeds lie dead.  But I would not walk all alone till I die  Without some life-drunk horns going by.  Up round this apple-earth they come  Blasting the whispers of the morning dumb:—  Cars in a plain realistic row.  And fair dreams fade  When the raw horns blow.  On each snapping pennant  A big black name:—  The careering city  Whence each car came.                         Like a train-caller in a Union Depot.  They tour from Memphis, Atlanta, Savannah,  Tallahassee and Texarkana.  They tour from St. Louis, Columbus, Manistee,  They tour from Peoria, Davenport, Kankakee.  Cars from Concord, Niagara, Boston,  Cars from Topeka, Emporia, and Austin.  Cars from Chicago, Hannibal, Cairo.  Cars from Alton, Oswego, Toledo.  Cars from Buffalo, Kokomo, Delphi,  Cars from Lodi, Carmi, Loami.  Ho for Kansas, land that restores us  When houses choke us, and great books bore us!  While I watch the highroad  And look at the sky,  While I watch the clouds in amazing grandeur  Roll their legions without rain  Over the blistering Kansas plain—  While I sit by the milestone  And watch the sky,  The United States  Goes by.                         To be given very harshly,  with a snapping explosiveness.  Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking.  Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking.  Way down the road, trilling like a toad,  Here comes the dice-horn, here comes the vice-horn,    Here comes the snarl-horn, brawl-horn, lewd-horn,  Followed by the prude-horn, bleak and squeaking:—  (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.)  Here comes the hod-horn, plod-horn, sod-horn,  Nevermore-to-roam-horn, loam-horn, home-horn.  (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.)

                        To be read or sung, well-nigh in a whisper.  Far away the Rachel-Jane  Not defeated by the horns  Sings amid a hedge of thorns:—  "Love and life,  Eternal youth—  Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,  Dew and glory,  Love and truth,  Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet."                         Louder and louder, faster and faster.    WHILE SMOKE-BLACK FREIGHTS ON THE DOUBLE-TRACKED RAILROAD,  DRIVEN AS THOUGH BY THE FOUL-FIEND'S OX-GOAD,  SCREAMING TO THE WEST COAST, SCREAMING TO THE EAST,  CARRY OFF A HARVEST, BRING BACK A FEAST,  HARVESTING MACHINERY AND HARNESS FOR THE BEAST.  THE HAND-CARS WHIZ, AND RATTLE ON THE RAILS,  THE SUNLIGHT FLASHES ON THE TIN DINNER-PAILS.                         In a rolling bass, with increasing deliberation.  And then, in an instant,  Ye modern men,  Behold the procession once again,                         With a snapping explosiveness.  Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking,  Listen to the wise-horn, desperate-to-advise-horn,    Listen to the fast-horn, kill-horn, blast-horn....                         To be sung or read well-nigh in a whisper.  Far away the Rachel-Jane  Not defeated by the horns  Sings amid a hedge of thorns:—  Love and life,  Eternal youth,  Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet,  Dew and glory,  Love and truth.  Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.                         To be brawled in the beginning with a  snapping explosiveness, ending in a languorous chant.  The mufflers open on a score of cars  With wonderful thunder,  CRACK, CRACK, CRACK,  CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK,  CRACK-CRACK-CRACK,...  Listen to the gold-horn...  Old-horn...  Cold-horn...  And all of the tunes, till the night comes down  On hay-stack, and ant-hill, and wind-bitten town.                         To be sung to exactly the same whispered tune  as the first five lines.  Then far in the west, as in the beginning,  Dim in the distance, sweet in retreating,    Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn,    Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn....                         This section beginning sonorously,  ending in a languorous whisper.  They are hunting the goals that they understand:—  San Francisco and the brown sea-sand.  My goal is the mystery the beggars win.  I am caught in the web the night-winds spin.  The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me.  I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree.  And now I hear, as I sit all alone  In the dusk, by another big Santa Fe stone,  The souls of the tall corn gathering round  And the gay little souls of the grass in the ground.  Listen to the tale the cotton-wood tells.  Listen to the wind-mills, singing o'er the wells.  Listen to the whistling flutes without price  Of myriad prophets out of paradise.  Harken to the wonder  That the night-air carries....  Listen... to... the... whisper...  Of... the... prairie... fairies  Singing o'er the fairy plain:—                         To the same whispered tune as the Rachel-Jane song—  but very slowly.  "Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.  Love and glory,

 Stars and rain,  Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet...."

The Firemen's Ball

 Section One "Give the engines room,      Give the engines room."  Louder, faster  The little band-master  Whips up the fluting,  Hurries up the tooting.  He thinks that he stands,                         To be read, or chanted, with the heavy buzzing bass  of fire-engines pumping.  The reins in his hands,  In the fire-chief's place  In the night alarm chase.  The cymbals whang,  The kettledrums bang:—                         In this passage the reading or chanting  is shriller and higher.  "Clear the street,  Clear the street,  Clear the street—Boom, boom.  In the evening gloom,  In the evening gloom,  Give the engines room,  Give the engines room,  Lest souls be trapped  In a terrible tomb. "  The sparks and the pine-brands  Whirl on high  From the black and reeking alleys  To the wide red sky.  Hear the hot glass crashing,  Hear the stone steps hissing.  Coal black streams  Down the gutters pour.  There are cries for help  From a far fifth floor.  For a longer ladder  Hear the fire-chief call.  Listen to the music  Of the firemen's ball.  Listen to the music  Of the firemen's ball.                         To be read or chanted in a heavy bass.  "'Tis the  NIGHT  Of doom,"  Say the ding-dong doom-bells.  "NIGHT  Of doom,"  Say the ding-dong doom-bells.  Faster, faster  The red flames come.  "Hum grum," say the engines,  "Hum grum grum."                         Shriller and higher.  "Buzz, buzz, "  Says the crowd.  "See, see,"  Calls the crowd.  "Look out,"  Yelps the crowd  And the high walls fall:—  Listen to the music  Of the firemen's ball.  Listen to the music  Of the firemen's ball.                         Heavy bass.  "'Tis the

 NIGHT  Of doom,"  Say the ding-dong doom-bells.  "NIGHT  Of doom,"  Say the ding-dong doom-bells.  Whangaranga, whangaranga,  Whang, whang, whang,  Clang, clang, clangaranga,                         Bass, much slower.  Clang, clang, clang.  Clang a—ranga— —  Clang—a—ranga—  Clang,  Clang,  Clang.  Listen—to—the—music—  Of the firemen's ball—  Section Two  "Many's the heart that's breaking  If we could read them all  After the ball is over." (An old song.)                         To be read or sung slowly and softly,  in the manner of lustful, insinuating music.  Scornfully, gaily  The bandmaster sways,  Changing the strain  That the wild band plays.  With a red and royal intoxication,  A tangle of sounds  And a syncopation,  Sweeping and bending  From side to side,  Master of dreams,  With a peacock pride.  A lord of the delicate flowers of delight  He drives compunction  Back through the night.  Dreams he's a soldier  Plumed and spurred,  And valiant lads  Arise at his word,  Flaying the sober  Thoughts he hates,  Driving them back  From the dream-town gates.  How can the languorous  Dancers know  The red dreams come                         To be read or chanted slowly and softly  in the manner of lustful insinuating music.  When the good dreams go?  'Tis the "  NIGHT  Of love,"  Call the silver joy-bells,  "NIGHT Of love "  ,  Call the silver joy-bells.  "Honey and wine,  Honey and wine.  Sing low, now, violins,  Sing, sing low,  Blow gently, wood-wind,  Mellow and slow.  Like midnight poppies  The sweethearts bloom.  Their eyes flash power,  Their lips are dumb.  Faster and faster  Their pulses come,  Though softer now  The drum-beats fall.  Honey and wine,  Honey and wine.  'Tis the firemen's ball,    'Tis the firemen's ball.